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13 November 2019CopyrightSaman Javed

The Weeknd must face copyright infringement suit, court says

A US court has denied The Weeknd’s motion to dismiss a copyright infringement suit against the Canadian singer over his song “A Lonely Night”.

The motion to dismiss was denied on November 6 by the US District Court for the Central District of California, which found that three British songwriters, William Smith, Brian Clover and Scott McCulloch, had raised “sufficient, well-pleaded arguments to plausibly allege infringement”.

In April this year, the songwriters filed a complaint against The Weeknd (real name Abel Makkonen Tesfaye), alleging that “A Lonely Night” infringes their copyright for a song they co-wrote in 2004, “I Need To Love”.

“A quick listen to the key-matched comparison [of both songs] will quickly dispel any doubt that ‘I Need To Love’ was copied,” the original complaint said.

The trio said that in 2005, music publisher Big Life Music acquired rights to sell three of the songwriters’ songs, including “I Need To Love”.

The song was pitched to artists all over the world, and in 2008 it was acquired by Universal Music Group.

In 2016, Universal Music Group allegedly relinquished all claims to “I Need To Love”, informing the songwriters that their song had not been used by the label or any of its artists.

“Two weeks later,  The Weeknd and Universal released his massively successful album Starboy, which topped the charts. On that album was a song named “A Lonely Night,” the trio said in their complaint.

Additionally, the songwriters submitted evidence from an expert musicologist, who said it “is clear that the similarities between the two songs could only result from copying”.

The Weeknd sought to dismiss the lawsuit, but the court said there is a “reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of the alleged infringement”.

It said The Weeknd had not sufficiently challenged the claims for direct copyright infringement, rather just sought dismissal of the claims.

“When there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief,” the court added.

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